Reflecting on "Islamic Studies"

            There seems to be a trend on the campuses of Islamic universities in Indoensia.  There is a deep concern about Orientalism – a sense that the West is out to destroy Islam – and that Western Scholarship about Islam and/or as  is part of it.  Obviously the intellectual root of this is Edward Said’s Orientalism, which held as its central thesis that 19^th century and early 20^th century Western scholarship about Islam was based on a desire to politically dominate Muslim countries.  This has lead to a complete distrust of Western scholars in some circles.  This distrust  can be seen in those who say that faculty from Islamic universities  should not study in the west.  This point of view is said to go to the highest levels of educational oversight  although there has been no official memo to this effect.

            There are some interesting observations to be made.  First, although Said’s Orientalism is clearly the intellectual root of this anti-Orientalist turn, this is obviously no reflection on the man or his book. Although Palestinian and clearly not western, Edward Sad was not a Muslim.  Further, he was western educated.  So what doe it mean, if anything, that the father of this anti-western trend is Christian, Western educated Columbic University professor.  It means that neither being a Christian nor being western educated necessarily sets one in opposition to Muslims.  Also, given Said’s popularity in the west – it means that western scholars of Islam are not opposed to critical self-reflection. 

At this point Said’s  work is as foundational a text as any in western Islamic studies.  Although his work can be, should be, and has been critically revisited, it is a must read without which the education of a student of Islam can be severely deficient or even simply incomplete.  Agree with him or not, Said must be read and must be dealt with. Orientalism remains an 800 pound gorilla in the field – you can chose not to like it, you can find flaws, but your ignore it at your own peril.  This aspect of Said’s work and its influence seems to be completely absent from the discussion of Orientalism.  As is

Said’s praise for anthropological approaches to the study of Islam.

            There also seems to be a level of linguistic disconnect that is distrust and misunderstanding  The (apparently) Arab terms dirasat Islamiyya and dirasat dinniyya are the literal equivalents of Islamic Studies and Religious Studies respectively.  But what these terms mean could not be further apart.  This is important because

The United States, Australia, and Germany, among other countries, have program that bring faculty from the State Islamic Higher Education system to pursue graduate degrees in Islamic Studies, Religious Studies, and sometimes, other fields such as Education and Anthropology.  These alumni engage such ideas as secularism, liberalism, pluralism, and feminism which have come under attack as part of a Western conspiracy to destroy Islam.

            The Indonesian-Arabic terms, dirasarat Islamiyya/dinniyya refer to a faith-based study of the divine’s interaction with humanity.  Dirasat dinniy  is a term that covers the religious education received in pesantren or madrasah.  It is the basic education needed to be an alim or other type of religious leader.  While dirasat Islamiyya  has a more intellectual  connotation, it remains a faith based endeavor.  In the history of the Islamic college system there was once a core curriculum designed to assure that all students had the same basic religious knowledge and orientation, that core program was referred to as dirasat Islamiyya.

            What is mean by religious studies or Islamic studies in the west could not possibly be further in meaning.  Religious Studies and Islamic Studies, at least at secular and certainly at state universities, while they do no require or even encourage the abandonment of one’s faith, do require an analysis of religion based on something other than personal faith.  Religious studies and Islamic studies in the west are by design hodge-podge disciplines.  They draw on history, linguistics, textual criticism, anthropology, sociology, literature, and any other social science or humanities approaches that can contribute to an understanding of their subject.  These fields are not defined by their methods or by their central theories, but by what they study.  And that is the central difference between the English terms and the Indonesian-Arabic terms.  The former are distinguished by what they study not how they studied it.  The latter are defined by how they study it.